Gail Simmons can’t find eggs right now either

For more than 20 seasons, Gail Simmons has been the resident Canadian on Top Chef. Now her home country is finally in the spotlight — both as the setting for the Top Chef: Destination Canada, the reality cooking competition’s 22nd season, and as the target of new tariffs and threats to make it the “51st state.” (For the record, Simmons is thrilled about the show and less enthusiastic about the other two developments.)

“I didn’t anticipate that it would be so meaningful,” the Toronto-born food writer, cookbook author and TV personality tells me over Zoom about releasing the current Canada-based season amid a trade war. “None of us could have seen it coming, that the world would sort of turn on its axis and all of a sudden Canada was the one that was in the news and was the issue. Although I will say Canada’s not the issue, but that’s a whole other thing.”

Simmons is creating her own buzz right now. In addition to being a judge on Top Chef — currently airing Thursday nights on Bravo — she has signed on to executive-produce the upcoming comedy series Taste, which stars Julie Bowen as a veteran food magazine editor (sound familiar?) who must find common ground with a TikTok chef influencer. Next fall she will release her book Guesting, a guide covering everything from entertaining tips to tipping etiquette. She’ll also mark two big milestones in 2026: a major birthday — “let’s be clear,” Simmons interjects, she is still officially 48 — and 20 years since her first Top Chef episode aired.

It’s a pretty impressive new chapter she’s embarking on — but fear not: Simmons assures me that she is, like so many of us, also just a mom trying to find eggs on supermarket shelves. Here’s what she tells Yahoo Life’s Unapologetically series about getting out of her comfort zone, taking care of herself (“I’m not gonna tell you that I love working out”) and filling her plate, literally and metaphorically.

What has it meant to be able to showcase Canada this season?

It was thrilling. And I learned a lot, and I got to experience a lot of things about Canada — and reexperience a lot of things about Canada — that I love. And now the timing of the show airing just feels like it was meant to be.

I promise I would ask [fellow Top Chef judge] Tom Colicchio about his hats and checked blazers if he were here, but let’s talk about fashion. [Host] Kristen Kish makes a lot of jokes about eating in a corset or having to undo her pants. Is there anything you won’t wear when you’re sitting down to 30 courses?

No. I just want to wear stuff that I like, that I’m comfortable in, that I feel great in. When you get dressed in the morning, is there anything you won’t wear? You won’t wear what doesn’t feel good. You buy the things you like. I mean, certainly, our wardrobe department over the years has helped me come out of my comfort zone a little and try new styles. And some things work, some things don’t. But ultimately, I just wear what makes me feel like my best self and comfortable.

I’m always amazed when people online comment things like, “Why did you let them put you in that?” Or, you know, “Who told you to wear that?” No one forces me. It’s a conversation. I’m a grown adult.

I like wearing color. I like wearing things that are comfortable but that are kind of sleek and make me feel professional and dressed up. I love dressing up. And it is fun to play dress-up. …

I make a point of not talking about the connection between what I wear and what I eat because I think that’s just setting people up for having thoughts about body dysmorphia and that you can’t do something because of how it makes you look. And I call bullshit on all that stuff.

Well, you look great while you’re eating.

Thanks! I do my best. No one’s perfect. I love the job, and I will do it regardless, you know? I would do it in sweatpants, and I’ll do it in a power suit.

Do you have any tips for getting through all those meals? I eat lunch and then I’m ready for a nap.

We’re not eating 30 plates of food; even if there are 30 dishes, we have two or three bites. No one says you have to finish your plate. We’re not at the table with our parents saying we can’t leave the table [until we’ve cleaned our plate]. We can’t. And there’s plenty of people who will have a bite of it. Our producers always want a taste after …

And we’re professionals. I know to eat something light, but that sustains me in the morning. I need to eat breakfast or else I’m not eating for five hours before we shoot. And then I come to the table too hungry, and then I eat too much of the beginning plates, and I want to spread it out.

That’s not to say that we aren’t full sometimes, and there are definitely days when I want to take a nap, but it’s not that hard. We’re all good. We have a few bites. We go for a walk. There’s usually a two-hour break between the challenge and judges’ table. And then by the time we’re halfway through judges’ table, Kristen pulls out the candy. We all want snacks, or we’re making plans for what’s for dinner. We just keep moving. If anything, I just make sure to get a lot of exercise. I just want to keep it all moving.

What is exercise like for you these days?

It depends. I definitely try to be more conscious of my schedule and exercise when I’m shooting because I’m eating a lot, but also my schedule’s not my own. I don’t have as much control over my hours. So I do Pilates a few times a week right here near my home in Brooklyn. I cycle when I can. I run when I can. I find that I do a lot more running when I’m on location because we often shoot in the summertime, and I don’t belong to a gym in every city we go to. So sometimes we’ll find a trainer or classes to go to in every city. But that’s when I run the most. I used to be a much more consistent runner, but since kids, I kind of stopped running.

I find that I’m more responsible when I just go to a class, get it done and come home. But when I’m on location and I am in the outdoors more and I can just kind of run — when I don’t have my kids and I’m not, you know, under the constraints of taking them to school and things like that — I have more freedom. And I do love running when I can. When I was in Toronto, I lived downtown in Little Italy, in a great neighborhood in the city. And I found the most perfect class. And I went to it three times a week and it just felt so great. It was like a combo Pilates and cardio studio. So you did half the class with Pilates and half the class was rowing or cycling. And I’ve never found a studio like that in the states — at least not that I’m aware of in New York or L.A., where I kind of am the most. And I miss it so much. I wish we could bring it here.

I’m not gonna tell you that I love working out; I don’t. I think anyone who does is lying. But I want to take care of myself and my body. I want to be around as long as possible for my family. I want to keep my heart healthy. I want to keep my joints able. And we’re not getting younger, so I just try to keep active. And in summer when we shoot, that’s easy to do because almost always we’re shooting in great weather.

You’ve got some big milestones and new projects like your TV show with Julie Bowen on the horizon. Your kids are getting older. How do you feel about this new chapter and shaking things up a little bit?

I like that that’s how it comes across. It’s great. I’m excited for a bunch of projects coming up in 2026. We will make another Top Chef, and I’m excited how that will look because every year, the challenge becomes: What do we do next? Where do we go next that feels fresh? What do we do that’s different than the year before? And I think for Season 23, that’ll be really exciting.

The show I’m working on with NBC and Julie is two years in the making — and it’s not done yet. There’s no guarantee that anyone will ever see it, but we are working hard with them on it. …

[It’s] obviously scripted, which is totally new for me. And that process has been really exciting because it is really far out of my comfort zone …

The thing about food that I hope this show will be able to sort of bring to light is just that food kind of touches everything. And we talk about that a lot on Top Chef, right? The conversations we have on Top Chef are, yes, about food, but they are using food as the conduit to bigger conversations in the world: diversity, inclusion, immigration, sustainability and climate, hospitality and nourishment and who gets to sit at your table. And I think those are like really big conversations. And I think that doing it through scripted comedy will be really, really fun. And I feel like I am so out of my element when we are in meetings not having a clue how the process works. I’m just along for the ride — and I’m thrilled to be.

I do feel like I’m out of the baby stage of my life with my children. And I do think it allows me a little more freedom to explore the things I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. But also, the last five years have been so complicated, you know, coming out of COVID and having small children. And so now I do feel like I can take on the bigger things.

Finally, with grocery prices up, I have to ask: Is there anything you’re cutting back on or a certain staple that is giving you pause?

The things that I use as the barometer for cost are eggs. They’re the things that I use the most in my house, that are always in my fridge no matter what. Eggs. Organic English cucumbers. … Where I live, almost all the organic English cucumbers come from Canada, so we’ll see if that price is gonna go up. And cans of whole tomatoes for soups, tomato sauces, all that. Those are the three things that I’m always looking at that I see the fluctuation in the most. … Eggs [prices] obviously are just bananas.

And it’s not even about egg cost. The cost is one thing, but it’s just that they’re not even findable anymore in my neighborhood. We always buy them at the supermarket near our house, like the Whole Foods or the Trader Joe’s near our house, or there’s a butcher on our corner that has really great organic eggs. And we get them, and the prices have changed so much. And then half the time in the last month, they just have been completely sold out. So whenever I see a dozen eggs at a reasonable cost, I get them, even if I’m on the other side of town.

It would be handy if you could take stuff home from the Top Chef kitchen.

We do when we’re on location. … Our culinary producer, Jamie [Lauren], who was a contestant on Season 5 of the show, builds this enormous kitchen with all of the most beautiful produce ever, and every day has to make sure it looks great and is perfect. And they get so much [food]. They donate almost all of it in whatever city we’re in to a local food bank if it hasn’t been opened or touched. But I would be lying if I said that after work on several days, I don’t go back there and stock the fridge at my Airbnb with whatever I need. Especially all the pantry staples that I feel like I don’t want to buy because I’m only there for a couple of weeks. Often they can’t use [any food] for the show if it’s a couple of days old and the produce doesn’t look perfect or something. And that’s the stuff that she’ll always set aside and tell us to just take. We go home and cook for each other, and that’s how we stock our fridge.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Source